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Bright Shining Lines

The House of Representatives almost turned into the Fight Club Thursday night, when Democrats ruled that a GOP motion had failed even though, when the gavel fell, the electronic score board showed it winning 215-213 along with the word FINAL. The presiding officer, Rep. Mike McNulty (D., N.Y.), actually spoke over the clerk who was trying to announce the result.

In the ensuing confusion several members changed their votes and the GOP measure to deny illegal aliens benefits such as food stamps then trailed 212-216. Boiling-mad Republicans stormed off the floor. The next day, their fury increased when they learned electronic records of the vote had disappeared from the House’s voting system.

I am almost physically ill with the dread I am feeling right now. I’ve said before that I have thought about armed revolution before. It is something that I think everyone who considers himself a patriot has to think about ahead of time. You might think about it and say “never”, but you need to think about it.

I am reminded of the cannibal paradox. The paradox is that there are a lot of people in starvation scenarios who turn to cannibalism and starve anyways. They starve because the cannibalism taboo is so strong that they wait too long and are past the point of no return before they do what they need to survive. There is a point of no return when it comes to revolution.

I have in my mind several bright, shining lines that shall not be crossed without retribution. I keep those lines, like Joe’s Jews in the Attic Test, in mind. I have them for two reasons. One, you should decide on your actions rationally and dispassionately when possible. Being worked up in the heat of the moment is not the time to make a decision like this. And the second is because the heat of the moment is just as likely to counsel you to not act, to wait a little longer, to not make that tough decision.

I haven’t told anyone what my bright shining lines are. If you give someone a line that they are not to cross, it simply invites them to dance around on the edge of it. This situation is not one of my bright shining lines. But it is damned close. If crossing one of these lines is a mid-air collision, then two jetliner pilots just looked each other in the eyes, and they know what color the other’s eyes are.

We are looking at a situation that appears to be that a vote was taken, a proclamation made in defiance of that vote, and the destruction of the records of that vote. Are the moonbats who think that GWB wants to put a dictatorship in place watching? One of the two highest legislative bodies in the land just gave every appearance of throwing all pretenses of representative rule out of the window. If laws are to be passed this way, then your vote means nothing. When Congress ignores the votes of its representatives, then it ignores your vote. For a few minutes, you were disenfranchised.

John Fund takes a long look at the shenanigans of holding votes open. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about that. I am looking at the fact that a vote was disappeared by a few members of Congress who disenfranchised me.

Comments

10 Comments

Viviansays on:August 7, 2007 at 11:40 am

Contingency planning shouldn’t be restricted to natural disasters. Having an intimate knowledge of what you really believe and how hard you believe it should be an ongoing process done in the light of a calm day. Reviewing ‘what do I do if…’ in the midst of ‘if’ happening is deadly stupid.

That moment in the House was scary as hell, even scarier was that so little attention was paid the day after. Oriana Fallaci details the sell-out of Europe to Opec in The Force of Reason. It’s all the scarier because it happened in broad daylight and no one stopped it. Now it’s too late, they have sold their souls.

I had one of those “scary” moments while discussing the 2000 election with my dad. He pointed out to me how close we were to a coup via the supreme court. I scoffed until I thought about it a little more carefully. The Democratic party tried to get the supreme court to disenfranchise us, and almost succeeded.

I never thought about what it would take, but I did comment the other day that I was glad the disagreements and political lines right now are not as regional as they were 150 years ago.